How Patterns handles your information — in plain language.
Patterns (the "app", "we", or "us") is a personalization app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android that generates wallpapers directly on your device using a built-in procedural engine — no images are downloaded and no external or AI services are used. You pick a generator, tune its controls, save and reuse your designs, and apply, export or share the results — all offline. This Privacy Policy explains what the app does and does not do with information on your device.
Patterns stores the following locally on your device only. None of it is transmitted off the device.
A wallpaper in Patterns is not an image file — it is a small "recipe": a generator identifier, a random seed, a handful of numeric parameters, and the colours you chose. Your saved designs and a rolling history of your most recent ones (capped at 100 entries) are written as small documents inside the app's own private storage. They contain no personal information and are never uploaded.
Your theme (light, dark or system), output orientation and output resolution are stored in the operating system's standard local preferences store for the app.
Previews shown in the browsing grid are rendered on demand and held in memory while the app runs. They are not written to disk and are discarded when the app closes.
Patterns does not access your contacts, call logs, location, microphone, camera, accounts, or the photos and files already on your device. It has no user accounts and asks for no personal details.
Patterns asks for as little as each platform allows, and only at the moment a feature needs it.
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription(Photos — add only) |
To save a wallpaper you generated into your photo library so you can set it from Settings. The app requests add-only authorization deliberately: it never needs to read, browse or modify your existing photos, so it does not ask to. You can revoke this in Settings → Privacy & Security → Photos. |
iOS and iPadOS provide no public API for an app to set the wallpaper directly. Patterns saves the image and hands you off to the Settings app to finish — the same thing every wallpaper app on the App Store does.
| Entitlement | Purpose |
|---|---|
com.apple.security.app-sandbox |
The Mac app runs inside Apple's App Sandbox, which confines it to its own container unless you explicitly grant access. |
files.user-selected.read-write |
So "Export PNG…" can write to the exact location you choose in the save panel — and nowhere else. |
assets.pictures.read-write |
"Set as Desktop" writes the rendered PNG to a Patterns folder inside your Pictures folder,
then asks macOS to use it as the desktop picture. The file has to live somewhere the window server can read;
a path inside the app's own sandbox container is not readable by it. The app reads nothing else from Pictures. |
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
SET_WALLPAPER |
To apply a wallpaper you generated to your home screen, lock screen, or both, using the Android wallpaper API. |
WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE(Android 9 and below only) |
To save a generated wallpaper into your gallery when you tap Export. On Android 10 and above this is handled by the system media store and no storage permission is requested. |
On every platform the app ships without any networking code, and the Android build
ships without the INTERNET permission — it is technically incapable of sending your data over the network.
Wallpapers are rendered on your device, by your device. What happens next depends on what you tap:
Patterns does not upload images anywhere.
The little information the app stores is used solely to provide its features — recreating your saved wallpapers, showing your generation history, and remembering your preferences. We do not use it for advertising, profiling, or any purpose unrelated to the features you see in the app.
We do not share, sell, rent, or disclose your information to anyone. Because the app has no network access, nothing leaves your device and nothing is sent to us or to any third party. No serversNo third partiesNo cloudNo AI services
The Settings screen contains links — "Privacy policy" (this page) and "Share feedback", which opens a pre-addressed message to us in your mail app. On iPhone and iPad, the wallpaper help sheet can open your device's own Settings app. Those destinations have their own privacy policies where applicable. Patterns shares no data with them; it simply opens the link you tapped.
Saved designs, generation history and your preferences remain on your device until you change or remove them. You can:
Images you have already exported to your photo library, gallery, Pictures folder or elsewhere are yours — they are ordinary files and are untouched by deleting the app.
All processing happens on-device and app data is kept in the operating system's private per-app storage, which other apps cannot read. On Mac the app additionally runs inside Apple's App Sandbox. Because nothing is uploaded, there is no server-side database that could be breached. You remain in control through your device's permission system at all times.
Patterns is a general-purpose personalization app and is not directed to children under 13. It does not knowingly collect personal information from children. Since the app collects no data and has no online component, it poses no data-collection risk to users of any age.
Patterns does not integrate advertising networks, analytics SDKs, crash reporting services, AI or cloud services, or social login providers, and embeds no third-party trackers. Every pattern you see is drawn by the app's own rendering engine on your device.
Depending on where you live, you may have rights under privacy laws such as the GDPR or CCPA. Since Patterns does not collect or hold any of your personal data on our side, there is nothing for us to access, correct, export, or delete on your behalf — full control rests with you on your device.
We may update this Privacy Policy if the app's features change. When we do, we will revise the "Effective" date above and publish the updated policy at this address. Continued use of the app after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
Questions or concerns about this policy or the app? Reach us at: